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Month: July 2015

I’ve been running with Windows 10 for the entire insider program.
It was a rocky start but the current state is a an awesome computing experience.

Over the course of the last 10 months (Since October 2014) I’ve been keeping track of the things I like the most, so I’ve compiled this list:

Virtual Desktops
a. Great for presentations
b. Keeping email out of the way
c. Starting fresh when you have a new project
d. Hit Ctrl+Win+Arrow to move between and Win+Tab to get this view:

🙂

Snapping
a. All the Command Prompts, GitShells and Editor windows can become cumbersom quickly being able to quickly put them in the corner makes for organizing the desktop effortless.
b. Ahh yeah corners!
c. When you have a window selected just press Win+Up/Down/Left/Right to get your windows in the right place

So much room for activities!

Mail and Calendar
a. My favorite part is that they don’t take up the whole screen
b. Also, they’ve added Google calendar integration, which makes planning with Android friends much easier.
c. Win+S brings up search and type mail or calendar to begin

Responsive, Clear, and Compatible with Google Calendar.

New Settings Page
a. Pulling the most used settings out of the control panel has made for a much easier time understanding what’s going on with your computer
b. I find this more user friendly and convenient, but there is still room for improvement and there are some privacy choices that should be easier to manage.Touch Friendly
d. Also all the settings are searchable from Cortana or the settings menu for super quick configurationUsing Search puts settings two clicks away. Mozilla Complaint… Scott Hanselman response

Universal Windows App
a. Having a consistent app experience across devices is something I’ve been looking forward to for some time.
b. By allowing developers to create apps regardless of device they can move more towards services to the consumer and away from silly gimicks
c. Take Uber for example.
By integrating with W10, Cortana, O365, Band, and other SDKs they can provide services to users in new ways without being cumbersome on each device.
Another Example is Reddit or other link sharing sites
By creating an app experience that unifies across devices, I can quickly engage with the content without having to learn how to control a new app.
Here’s the new Universal Twitter App looking good in the desktop:Learn more about Twitter and their Universal App.
This leads to my next favorite feature

Windows Hello
a. Ahhhh finally, no more passwords.
b. Everything I like to use is behing a secure OS identity and password/biometric protection.
c. No more passwords for every site, by letting ‘Hello’ and edge handle my passwords I don’t have to think twice about my browser storing them.

HELLO WINDOWS!

Cortana
a. Have I said Cortana yet?
b. I think its low on my list, because I’ve been in the habit of now using because of the Beta Builds. It hadn’t been working very will until the last couple releases.
c. Having said that, I am very excited about querying cortana instead of rifling through folder, documents, and applications.
d. 4 Favorite Cortana Commands:
Remind me to move the motorcycle at 7pm
What’s the weather like in Portland
What’s on my calendar today
What’s 20% of 80 (Tip Calculation)

Groove & Pictures
a. The new Groove and Pictures apps are excellent.
b. Groove
I get a larger collection of music than Spotify for far less money.
I can also control the experience with my voice
‘Play… pause… next song… play playlist…’
The app is responsive and fast
c. Pictures
Rich display of photos
It looks nice
It runs fast
It does cool smart albums based on location and other tags
It pulls my pictures from all of my computing history

Snipping Tool and App/Game Recorder
a. The new snipping tool has a timer! Ahh that makes taking screen shots so much richer.
b. I can now open a context menu, or show a menu that only appeared during a zoom
c. The game recorder is really just fun to have when I get an occasional game of Poly Bridge, Goat Simulator, or Team Fortress in.

Record That… Awesome paragraph I just wrote!

Continuum
a. I carry a surface with me when I travel and the new continuum feature is spot on.
b. I’m amazed at how quickly it came together too.
c. The builds for Surface were always a little bit funky and the driver support seemed off for turning on the device, using the pen, and working with multiple desktop.
d. But everything tightened up in the last couple weeks and it works better than ever.
e. When interfacing with a pen in continuum mode a an excellent handwriting recognizer pops up and makes using the surface super fun.

JavaScript is cool. I don’t know why, but that’s what I hear. So I decided to dedicate a quiet week to learning all about JavaScript from this book Eloquent JavaScript. The author is great and the explanations/examples are clear and interesting.

I’m almost halfway through the book and these are just a few of the cool things I’ve learned:

Lexical Scoping

Lexical Scoping is not just fun to think about it can be very powerful. What is going to happen when the scope of a function is determined by the function that calls it?

You can get functions to do all sorts of crazy stuff this way.

Here are a couple different ways to get it into your head:

From Eloquent JavaScript:
“…each local scope can also see all the local scopes that contain it. The set of variables visible inside a function is determined by the place of that funciton in the program text. All variables from blocks around a functions definition are visible — meaning both those in function bodies that enclose it and those at the top level of the program. This approach to variable visibility is called lexical scoping.” – Marijn Haverbeke

This is cool. I’ve never used a ternary operator. I could see this saving lots of lines for if statements.

Variables as Tentacles

‘rather than boxes. They do not contain values; they only grasp them … when you need to remember something, you grow a tentacle to hold on to it or you reattach one of your existing tentacles to it.’ – Marijn Haverbeke

Like lexical scoping, this is a cool metaphor for looking at your programs and functions. Gosh octopi are cool and smart!

do loops

Do this…
Then loop if the condition is met.
When you just need to get something done. DO it!

Visual Studio Code is a source code and text editor for Windows, Linux and OS X. It includes support for debugging, embedded Git Control, rich development experiences such as intelligent code completion (also known as IntelliSense), and other features. It is also customizable, which means that users can change the editor’s theme, change the editor’s keyboard shortcuts, change the editor’s preferences, and others.
Visual Studio Code is based on Electron, a piece of software that is based on Chromium, which is used to deploy io.js applications for the desktop. Visual Studio Code uses the Blink layout engine to render the interface

How does it work?
—————–

Built on the Electron Shell with HTML based editor ‘Monaco’ used in F12 and Azure Websites.

Between Visual Studio and Notepad. It fairs right in the middle with other Editors like Atom, Sublime and Brackets.

To be clear, this is not a stripped down version of Visual Studio. This is an entirely new editor built from the ground up to be lightweight and highly usable right out of the box.